Northside Church - Sydney
Family Tithes – Week 1: Why Do Christians Give?
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. Well, I don't know if you're a sunrise or a today's showperson. I love Melanchoschi. I mean, I think they are the best combo on television of a morning between the hours of six to nine. And I was watching Melanchoschi the other week and a headline came up that was so appropriate to do with this series, "Family Tides." If you're an '80s kid, you'd get the reference. But this headline came through, reported that Pastor Tim Lucas of Liquid Church in New Jersey in the United States during a message like this, decided to give his church $30,000. It sounds like a bit of a lottery, right? And so I thought, "Well, great inspiration." So on that note, no, I'm not going, I'm not going, you see, it sounded like a lottery, but that wasn't the whole story, right? The deal was, if you Google their story, that he actually gave back the offering for the church that night so they could pay it forward into their communities. And millions of web hits later and a raft of various stories on ABC and MSNBC and CNN and Fox News, and even Melanchoschi on Sunrise over here in Australia. It left the whole world asking after millions of hits, "Why?" Why would the church give away money like that? In a world where everyone's trying to hold on to money, why would they do that? Why do Christians give? And so what we're going to see today through God's word is that what is true of the church today in terms of history, there are liquid church, was true of the church back when it first started. I mean, we've just been through the book of Acts, and if you read through the book of Acts, particularly Acts 3 through to about 5, that sort of area, you see that whenever God calls you into His community, He calls you into community of radical generosity. And when people see this happening, it ripped through the political and the social realm like lightning. People saw this and people started to believe they saw the difference of Christians. You see how the church used their money and their wealth was not a means to doing their mission, it was their mission. It was a communication of their mission, and you see it was a communication of the gospel. And look, the gospel's like a gobstopper. I don't know if you ever used to have them as a kid, they're very hard-lolly. And you see the gospel's like a gobstopper. If you want to bite down hard on the gospel, it's going to hurt you. If you want to get into it quick, it's going to hurt you. Instead, like a gobstopper, you have to suck on it for a while, and you just have to just dwell on it for a while and just watch the beautiful colors and the layers emerge as you suck on it for a while. And so what it means for us, guys, is that to truly get the gospel, it means it's going to mean to shape your perspective on and your relationship to your money. And the funny thing is, if you've been with us this year, we've covered some of the biggest topics and the most prevalent topics of the Bible, the role of the church, what is the gospel, what is the nature of Christian hope? In the last six weeks, what is Christian mission? And you see, here's the funny thing, we could talk about that until we're blue in the face. But there can be no greater indication as to whether we truly get it than how we use our money. So we come to the pointy end of the year, guys. It's game time. And how you use your money is the great indicator, the great litmus test, the great chlorine strip to your life to see whether the gospel is present at the very depths of your heart. And if you're a guest with us tonight, you can just relax, this is cool. It's not an appeal. We're not going to ask you for any money here, so you can sit back and relax. But what we're going to read from tonight is the story of how the first temple in Jerusalem came to be built. And it's not a story, it's real life, you can go and visit the temple today or the remnants of the temple in Jerusalem today. And the funny thing is, in a world where human nature gone wrong, we have seen in recent times, right, kings and dictators, hoarding money and wealth at the cost of their people in Egypt. You see Mubarak and what had happened there, we've just seen recently in Libya and the billions of dollars that Gaddafi has ripped out of his people and instead tonight we see a king not hoarding his wealth but giving it away, not at the cost of his people but to the benefit of his people. And in King David, in 1 Chronicles chapter 29, we see that he calls an offering of the people to help build the temple of God, but David, talk about putting your money where your mouth is, he invests a modern day equivalent, get this, $45 billion of his own money into the treasures of the temple which ended up costing, they believe scholars believe about $56 billion, David contributed $46 billion out to $56 billion to build the temple, why? Let's read from 1 Chronicles chapter 29 verses 10 through to 14, funny thing is he's doing it out of joy as well, I can't get this, David praised the Lord in the presence of the whole assembly saying, "Praise be to you, O Lord God of our Father Israel, from everlasting to everlasting, Yours O Lord is the greatness in the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor for everything in heaven and earth is yours, Yours O Lord is the kingdom, you are exalted as head over all wealth and honor come from you, you are the ruler of all things, and your hands are strength and power to exalt and to give strength to all. Now our God, we give you thanks and praise your glorious name, but who am I and who are my people that we should be able to give as generously as this, because everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand. Have you ever had those conversations with people, could be friends, family member, non-Christians, ask you those sorts of questions, are you one of those weird churches that makes you give 10% of your money, are you one of those people that get caught up in the whole blessing of giving money and all that kingdom stuff, I don't know, have you ever had that sort of conversation, look at the heart of it, they're asking why do Christians give, and I can't give you a definitive answer tonight, but I want to show you tonight that Christians give because they have a different perspective on three things on money's provision, they have a different perspective on money's purpose, and Christians have a different perspective on money's power, it's effect on us, you see, we Christians think differently about the provision of money and wealth in our lives, and I was down in Manly one sort of late summer's afternoon, it was sticking hot there in my heavy anas, and I could smell just the beautiful, wafting smell of the waffle cones at Copenhagen, and I was busting to get in there and grab myself an ice cream, and as you do the places full of kids that are going crazy, and there are these two kids in front of me with their parents, and they've got their faces pressed up against the glass, and I want that one, and I want that one, and they're just getting so excited, you can almost sort of see the lip salivating as they look at the butterscotch, and the caramel, and they just couldn't believe it, they couldn't wait to get it, and you know when kids sort of reach up to get their ice cream, and they're chipping like this, and so they get this ice cream, and here's a little guy, a little brother of about this four or five year old girl, and he's straight into it, that chocolate thing is all over his face, and he's only into his first bite, and the most amazing thing happens, I see this little girl, and she seems to hold onto it, and she waits a little bit, and dad's paid the money, and she looks up at him, and she says, "Dad, would you like a lick of my ice cream?" You see, she embodied what David was saying here in verse 14 of this passage, "But who am I, and who are my people that we should be able to give as generously as this, everything comes from you father, and we've given you only what comes from your hand." You see, no matter how hard you work, everything is a gift from God, and that is we are to our wealth, what a four year old is, was to her ice cream on that day. We as Christians seek to give dad a lick of the ice cream first, and you know, it seems in Congress, doesn't it? When we first hear that, everything belongs to God, we think, "What are you talking about? I've worked hard for my wealth. I've worked hard to do the job that I'm doing. I've worked hard to get this money and to earn the pay and check, and I was innovative, and I found my job and I interviewed well. Let me ask you tonight, guys. Come on. Who was the one that gave you the brains to interview well? Who was the one that sent you to the school that you went to? Who was the one who gave you the nice suburb that you grew up in? Who did that?" It's like the story, two worms fall from the sky. One falls into a crack in the cement and the other falls into a dead cat. After about three days, the worm in the crack in the cement leans over, malnourished, hardly able to speak. He turns to the worm and the cat and he says, "Could you please tell me the secret to your success?" The other word turns to him and says, "Of course. It's hard work and a sound strategic vision." Come on, guys. We've fallen into a dead cat here on the Lower North Shore. If ever there is a place we have fallen into a dead cat on the Lower North Shore of Sydney here, guys, let's be realistically with ourselves tonight. Our wealth is a consequence of our circumstances. You know what? If God had, we could have been put in the middle of an African desert somewhere. We'd be seeing a different tune then. You see, until God breaks into our lives, "It's all me. It's all me. It's all my work. I did it all. I did it all." But Christians are different. We say, "No, God's a provider." Who am I? Who am I to give this back to you, God? Guys, I've got to ask you tonight. When you have the opportunity, when you first receive that from his hand, do you look up to him like that three-year-old girl and say, "Would you just like a lick of my ice cream?" Christians give, first of all, because they recognize that their wealth ultimately doesn't come from themselves but from God. God is a great provider. And we understand provision. The other thing we understand as Christians is the purpose of money. You see, if Christians have got this new perspective on the provision of money and wealth in our lives, then we've also got a new perspective on its purpose. And that is that you are created to be a steward of your wealth. That was God's intentions. Go and read Genesis chapter 1 verse 28 and talks about the way that God created us to rule over all things on the earth. We were created to be good stewards. I mean, take it from a modern biblical scholar in some sense. Take it from Spider-Man with great power comes great responsibility. You see, it's a Spider-Man principle. The more money you have, of course, the more influence you can have in the world. Of course, the more power you can have in the world. That's part of how the world works right. But with great power comes great responsibility. And although God may give you that power and I pray that He does in that sense, He calls you to be responsible with it. He calls you to be a steward with it. You see, here's what sin does. What the fallen nature of our world does. It takes the concept of stewardship and it twists it into ownership. It takes what we were created to be stewards and it twists it and it says, no, no, it's mine. That's not how God intended to be. That's what Jesus was going on about. It's parable of the good steward. When Jesus interpreting how this old testament stuff was happening, the parable of the good steward, a great king gives these guys a stack of money to deal with. One gets five talents, another gets two talents, another gets one talent. Now, a talent was worth $500,000 in modern day terms. So one guy is sitting on, what's the math, $2.5 million? He goes out and he invests and he comes back, he makes five more talents on top of that. Another one goes out, he brings back two more talents from the two that he had. The guy with the one goes and buries it in the sand. He was afraid of his master. And in the story, the master comes back, he says, you wicked lazy student. You've been totally responsible with my money and it says he throws him out into the cold and the dark where they'll be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Now, what's the point here? It's not about kingdom multiplication principles. It's not so much about the math, but it's about the principle of it that the servants in the parable didn't own what they were investing. They didn't know. It was still the masters and they were entrusted to go and do something with it. The talents still belong to the masters. And so they were servants. They weren't owners. And so this is what it shows us. It shows us that not only is God the great provider, but he doesn't give up his ownership of his resources when it leaves his hand. And so we're just stewards. And so the question is, well, it's like the title of Graham's great title on the topic last year. The question is, if God owns it, what am I doing with it? If God owns it, what am I doing with it? You see, what Jesus is saying through this little story in modern day terms that Christians are the modern day equivalent of fund managers for kingdom resources. What are fund managers do if you're not in a financial scene? Fund managers are these wonderful esteemed people, many in our congregation that go and take other people's money and they use all their skills and all their resources and all their best thinking in order to bring back a great return on that money. But fund managers for one minute don't begin to believe that they own the funds under management. And here's the thing I love about fund managers. A good fund manager gets excited. A good fund and manager that is joyful. A good fund manager is passionate about taking the clients assets and multiplying them and doing something great with them. And they enjoy watching it grow. God calls us to be fund managers for the kingdom. Everything he's given us, he's saying, you've got to invest that in line with the values and the purposes of the master investor. Christians give guys because they get excited at putting God's resources to work and they understand, they understand the purpose of money that is to be good stewards, good investors, good fund managers. And so we see that Christians give because they realize everything's from God, they realize the purpose of money that it's about being kingdom investors. And so therefore Christians have to be overwhelmingly generous, radical givers, abundant distributors. That's what we're supposed to do. So that's it. Go do it. We couldn't in there. Do we? Look, it's a question I've been struggling with. It's a deal. I've got to process everything we're talking about, particularly such a sensitive topic like money. And I've got to ask a question, why do we find it so difficult to let go? To let go of our money? Now, I'm not calling the question the hearts or the intentions of many of us here. A lot of us have great intentions when it comes to giving away our money. But what we see in the way that Jesus teaches is that money is the one area in which intentions often don't affect the actions. In fact, it's the opposite of way around that the actions affect the intentions. Doesn't Jesus say what your treasure is? The actions. Your heart will be also the intention. It's difficult to give our money away. That's why Mark chapter 10 verse 17 to 30. Remember the story of the famous rich young ruler that comes up to Jesus and says, Lord, Lord, what might I do to inherit eternal life? And so he calls him good teacher. And Jesus says, you know, the commandments don't murder. Don't commit adultery. Don't steal. Don't give a false testimony. Don't defraud on your father or mother. And the guy says, yep, been there done that, bought the t-shirt next. And the funny thing is Jesus doesn't rebut him on the point. So what it implies to us in that passage that this was a good guy. This was an honorable guy that happened to be wealthy. It's showing us too that Jesus is not against wealth creation. This was a good guy that was doing it the right way. But Jesus says one thing you lack, go sell everything you have, give it to the poor, and you'll have treasure in heaven. And then come follow me. And that says that he goes away. Sad. Jesus says it's harder for a rich person to enter the kingdom than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle and all interpretation aside. You know, all in terms of whether it's an actual needle or a gate in Jerusalem. You know, what is interesting in that story is that the disciples are startled with Jesus' response because they look at this guy and they say he can't get into heaven. Who can? He's rich and he's good. And what it shows us is when it boils down, you look underneath the surface with it all is that money has got the power to blind us spiritually. What do you think Jesus says? Watch out for all types of greed. It doesn't say watch out for all different types of adultery. It's pretty obvious when you're in adultery, but all types of all types of greed, it blinds us spiritually. It's so great that people with money will almost automatically be blind to the gospel of the kingdom. Those that are blessed are the poor. The last shall be first and the first shall be last. Unless God breaks in and directly intervenes, it's totally impossible without grace coming into your life because money has got such a spiritual power to blind us from the kingdom. And so what we learn is money can exercise great power over us. Why? Because we all treasure treasures. We were built like that. We were built to treasure treasures. God made us to treasure things and see the choice that Christians have got to make on a daily basis. Is where will I store up my treasure? Will it be in God's treasury or will it be in my treasury? And see, see what David was doing here? It wasn't just fundraising for the sake of it, ridiculous summer money, $56 billion. Now, it says here verse 8 of 1 Chronicles 29. Anyone who had precious stones gave them to the treasury of the temple of the Lord in the custody of Jehil, the Gershen height. You see, every temple had a treasury. It had the very heart of it where all the gold and the wealth was stored. And it was supporting the temple and the salvation system of that day. And see, what God is saying here is He's saying, "Put your treasure in my treasury. Put your treasure in my temple. Put your treasure into the worship of my rescue plan for the world. Put your treasure in me." And people did it with joy and see what it's saying to us. If you're not doing that, then the implication is that when you're giving away what you're treasuring is, it's in some other temple and it's in some other treasury if it's not to go on. So what do we read out of this? You start to go, "Come on, Sam. You're just trying to argue to get this money into the north side coffers here." No, it was more than that. Look, there was only one temple. He didn't have temples on every local corner in Jerusalem. The temple was the poverty-breaking machine of the society of the day. There was no Jewish center link. It was the temple. And so when they built a poverty-breaking machine, they built a machine that was going to unleash the mission of God on that entire nation. And so what David was doing, he was saying in light of your view of who God is, that he wants to be in relationship and that he's up to us. It's everything we've been talking about in Acts. In light of all of this, are you going to make a decision to put your treasure in his treasury or your own? Do you want to be part of his mission or your own mission? And are they aligned? You see, your treasury is the greatest litmus test of that challenge. Your treasury is where you find it easiest, the easiest place to save or to spend your money. It's effortless to put your money towards that which is your real God. No matter what you say, I believe. And so that's what Jesus was getting at. When he gets to the pointy end of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6, verse 19, he says, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth when moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break and steal for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." See, I love the order that he has here in this passage. Look at this, some people say that his choice of illustrations, a brilliant moth, represents nature's corrosion, rust represents time's corrosion, and the thief represents humanity's corrosion. You see, Jesus is not being a financial killjoy, guys. He's not trying to make life boring for us. What he's doing, he's helping us to be ever more realistic about life. And what is really interesting for us is what we think will make us secure. The more we invest our money into that, that we think is going to make us secure, the more we want to protect it. We build houses and then get security systems to protect that. And Jesus is saying, no, no, no, no, there's only one safe investment and it's not the Sydney property market. It's the things of the living God, the things which cannot be eaten away by moth and the thief and the drought and the flood and recession and terrorism and death, all treasures of earth no matter how good a subject to erosion. Jesus has just been real, right? So guys, our hearts implicitly know this but we don't dare admit it. What we're shoving all our security into is eroding away by nature and time and humanity. We all treasure treasures but here's the thing, money will quickly and mercilessly reveal to us what we really treasure, particularly if it's if we treasure something other than God. Look, what is, I don't know, what does that look like? What does that look like for you? I don't know. You might find it, you might find it tough to give but if you can buy clothes at the drop of the hat, then maybe how you look and in the sense of approval or the circles that you're dressing, maybe that's meeting more to you at that particular point in time. Maybe that's where your real treasure is. Maybe if you find yourself slaving away at your career and you're slaving away trying to work the status and deep down maybe your career and that sense of security is more important to you at the moment. Maybe that's your treasury. I don't know, if you anything like me and Kristin and I would talk this through, it's really tough for us but if you're the sort of person that just loves seeing the savings stack up in the bank and you're going back and you're having to look at it all the time, then maybe your bank accounts, your treasury for that point in time. Maybe that's your real treasury. We all treasure treasures. Money is a, well, it's like the great chlorine strip to the heart like I was saying. It's always going to show you what you really worship. Approval, comfort, security. So let me dip the chlorine, stick into your heart for a second. These are the sorts of questions that comes up on the little chlorine model called the gospel and you sort of line it up. I don't know. May I apply to you? May not. That's something I've been applying to my heart this week. Do I have good resources and use them to maintain and pursue a lifestyle that's at the upper limits of what I can afford? Do I let a fear of losing my lifestyle keep me from being generous? Do I compare myself primarily with those who have either the same or greater standard of living than me? And do I ever consider how I can simplify my lifestyle in order to free up resources to invest in God's kingdom? I'm processing as much as you guys right now. But how we answer those questions is going to help reveal the degree to which money has power over us. It's a spiritual power guys and it's not something to be messed with. Why is it so hard to give? It's a power. How do we break that? How do we set free? Galatians 5 once says it is for freedom that Christ has set you free. It's not talking just about freedom from captivity and freedom from sin and freedom from death. You know what? It's freedom from the power of money. And the questions we've got to ask is how do we get to a place where we're radically generous? We're not worried about money and we can give freely and live how Jesus says we're not treasuring earthly treasures but the heavenly treasures. What we have established is that everyone at the center of their soul treasures something. What does a treasure mean? It means to look at something and to fill your heart with the beauty and the value of it. It's to say if I just have this then it's worth it. If I just have this then I'm worth it. If I could just have this then it really could be worth it. It's the Golan principle. Right? Whoever has their treasure calls it my precious. My precious. And you come under its power. And Jesus is saying at the center of everyone's soul is their precious. And whatever it is you're enslaved to it and you'll do whatever it takes to have it and to protect it. And if you push some people hard enough for their treasure they'll die for it. Just like Golan was prepared to do. You know guys here's the thing though. Every treasure but Jesus will insist that you die to purchase it. And yet Jesus himself is the one treasure that died to purchase you. How do we break free? Only if Jesus is your treasure. Only if Jesus is your treasure will you be free from money? How? How does he become our treasure? Think about what he did with his treasure. He was ultimately rich. He was ultimately wealthy. He was the one at the center of the universal provision. He had it all and he became ultimately stripped. He became ultimately poor. Paul echoes it in 2 Corinthians chapter 8 verse 9. He says for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich yet for your sakes he became poor so that you through his poverty might become rich. Why do you do this? It's a Golan principle. Come on you only die for your precious. You know when we see the biblical story when Jesus goes and endures across what else were you doing? What it says to us is that you were his precious. You were the thing he was prepared to die for. You were the thing that was more valued than the riches of the universe. That's how precious you are. The first Peter chapter 2 verse 19 says your God's purchased possession. You were God's treasure. So guys unless until you realize that you're God's treasure unless you know that he cares for you like that. Unless that he went beyond the realms of intention into action treasured his treasure then you won't make him your treasure. Guys here it is. Christians give as a demonstration that they're no longer slaves to money that they have been set free by the work of Jesus Christ. In a world you have to go to the casinos. You only have to look at the policies of Andrew Wilkie and the current government at the situation to say that money is a power and it is enslaving people around this world and it's done so for decades. Christians give because they can. In a world where so many can't. That's because of work across. What do we give? It's because we see money differently from everyone else. We see God's provision that it comes from him. We see the purpose of money is that we might invest it in his purposes and we see the power of money that we can be slaves to it until Jesus comes in and breaks into our life and sets his free from that. So guys is it time to renew your perspective tonight? Because here's the thing. I don't know if you like how I was when I was a little kid. My parents always make me get Clark Sandals for school. I was the biggest geek in school and part of the problem with Clark Sandals is that they were leather. We didn't have all the synthetics back then in the '80s like we do these days. So my dad had a funny thing from my grandfather and it was called a shoe stretcher. It went into go into any shoe and you would apply it in, you'd wet the leather a little bit just to soften it up a bit and you would turn this crank and this thing would have a slowly pull outwards and outwards and outwards until it's stretched and built more capacity in the shoe. Guys the gospel works in our hearts like a shoe stretcher does in a shoe. The gospel's a shoe stretcher and it's not an appeal. What it is a call tonight though is to take the gospel into the very center of your heart and by God and the power of his Holy Spirit you're just going to start turning the cranks a little bit and he's going to wet the leather that is the hard shell that we've developed around our approach to giving money and he's going to move us further and further. It's not going to happen by accident. You know what, it's not going to happen by a sermon. I'm going to be realistic here. So in that sense I'm calling all of us over the next four weeks into that process of being stretched. I've put together, adapted a study, a 20-day study in stewardship in which it just takes a passage from the Bible on money on stewardship and it gives us an opportunity to take that in our quiet times into our lives and just to turn the cranks a little bit more. I want to challenge you tonight. This is not an appeal but it's a challenge to go and take one of these from the door. Five days out of every seven and in your quiet time to meditate on the scriptures of God, allow God to move into your life and to build that capacity. Don't walk out of this place without this. It's not going to happen overnight but it will happen and it will happen through God's word and the power of his Holy Spirit and by participating on our part. I call you to do that tonight. Why do Christians give it's because when God broke into the world and the person of Jesus, he turned our perspective, our relation to the nature of money on its head into a community of radical generosity. That is my hope and prayer for us as a church. We have been through all the major issues this year and it's game time. The way to know if you were getting the gospel, guys, is to look at what you're doing with your money. Your hearts allow God to move in to stretch you, to mold you by the power of his bread. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for all that you have given us. The incredible blessing, Lord God, realistically, that we have in this incredible church. Father tonight, I really believe over these next couple of weeks this could be a real turning point in the life of our church. In which when we've talked about mission just not in terms of service, not in terms of just knowing the gospel but in terms of getting the gospel Father God, we invite you in to the very depths of our heart to turn it inside out and to build a capacity in us that even surprises ourselves. Lord, will you speak to us, each and every one of us? I know I've got plenty of work to do. Over these coming weeks to know what it is to get the gospel. Allow the gospel to cut across the suburbs of our lives like the M2 does across northwestern Sydney. Heavenly Father, let no area of our life be secret, be locked up, be unaccessible to you. We open it to you now. In the name of Jesus, the one who became poor so that we might become rich. May each and every one of us, even if we're not a follower of him tonight, move in, step into that incredible freedom that he's given us and we thank you for that. We give out of gratitude for that and we pray that you turn this community upside down in his precious name. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]